Look For The Sky
by tori siikanen
Summary: [Biting The Sun] QuasiRobots do everything for you. You never grow old, or die for long, you can look like anything you want, and it never, ever rains inside the dome of FourBEE. So why do you yearn for something more? Slashy content anticipated.
1. Whisper Secrets

**Translator's note:** Though the excerpts are written in equivalent modern English, there are some Jang terms of slang that pale in translation. This is a glossary:

_attlevey_: Hello.

_dalika_: Violent argument.

_derisann_: Lovely, beautiful.

_droad_: incredibly boring, a mindless waste of time.

_drumdik_: Utterly horrible, the most ghastly thing.

_farathoom_: Bloody, fucking hell.

_floop_: Jerk. See also _thralldrap_.

_graks_: Balls.

_groshing_: Fabulous, marvellous.

_insumatt_: Unsurpassable.

_onk_: Mild ejaculation, e.g. bother.

_ooma_: Endearment, like honey or darling.

_ooma-kasma_: Extreme term of affection, e.g. "Love of my life." Not generally used.

_promok_: Moron.

_selt_: slow on the uptake. 'Con'-able.

_soolka_: Well-groomed. Applied by Jang only to non-Jang.

_thralldrap_: see _floop_.

_tosky_: Neurotic, irritable.

_Vixaxn_: a word so bad that it is often not written in full.

_zaradann_: Insane, nuts.

**General Terms**

_Glar_: Early Four BEE title, similar to professor. The term hung on as a polite name for Q-R teachers at the hypno-schools, but otherwise was extinct by this time.

hypno-school: children of the fours attend six hours of hypno-school each day, where they learn incredibly complex mathematics and arcane subjects of theoretical knowledge through trance-induction. it should be noted that this education does not include knowledge of many practical or survival activities, as everything is provided to citizens of the fours through a legion of Quasi-Robots doing all the real work.

_Jang_: the middle stage of human life, an extended adolesence that lasts until the Jang grows bored of the structureless fun that is expected of his age-group and applies to become an Older Person, adopting the customs and behaviour of that group. the Jang stage usually lasts two _rorls_, but some stay in this stage for far langer than that.

mid-_vrek_: Middle period of any _vrek_, lasting forty units.

Older Person: the final "Adult" stage of human life. Older People have jobs and become Makers with another Older Person to supply the other half of material required to create a child, a process done entirely through creche incubation. All people of the Fours regularly ingest contraceptives, so childbirth in the older sense is unheard of in Four society.

PD: Personality Dissolution. Since the people of the Fours enjoy a form of immortality where their soul-essences can be retrieved and placed into new bodies, Older People who grow tired of their lives can opt to "die" by having their personality erased and start over from infancy, but with a Q-R Guardian instead of Makers.

_rorl_: Four BEE equivalent of a century.

split: Four BEE minute.

unit: Four BEE day.

_vrek_: Period of one hundred units.

* * *

1. 

Whisper Secrets

Today was the day that I was allowed to go to the History Tower, so I went to the Dream Rooms instead. Not that I didn't want to go to the History Tower, but my Q-R guardian would end up encouraging me to do Jangish things instead of indulging a _tosky_ preoccupation with the past. No one in my circle had any _promok_ Quasi-Robot guardian watching over them all the time; most of them had makers and a couple of them had Q-R guardians when they were still in hypno-school, but didn't now and hadn't for _vreks_.

Except me.

"It is not recommended at this time," the Committee said the last time I'd requested to be released from my Q-R guardian, and then they spent some time talking about me as if I wasn't there, comparing my activities to the average Jang behaviours and arguing over when I would be ready. Not recommended at this time. They always said that. It drove me _zaradann_.

Someone walked into my path as the Dream Rooms loomed ahead, their jewelled spires pulsing fractal rainbow light and holosprites flitted and chased along the park. The crystal promenades are crowded; someone's always getting in the way.

But he didn't get out of the way. "_Attlevey_, old _ooma_. Still yourself, I see."

He smirked and tossed jewelled blue hair over his broad shoulder, shivering it like a lion's mane. Not that he'd know what a lion was--he was Jang, like me, and Jang don't go to the History Tower. They don't see what the point of restriction is, because it's all boring educational flashes and no hypno-induction records at all--and didn't they go through all that learning junk in hypno-school, without having to remember the process? How _droad, ooma_. Have some ecstacy.

I looked him up and down--a good body. Tall, slender but wiry muscled, sparkling blue eyes to match the hair. He'd spent time in the cosmetic unit, wearing abstract swirls that highlighted his best features--which meant the silly old _thralldrap_ was so busy he was hard to look at from the neck down.

"_Attlevey_," I said, pointedly excluding the endearment. "And you are someone else."

"Guess who I am," he said. "I didn't have it flashed. Even though you never bother to check, and so fail to recognize anyone."

"Dammik," I said.

"That _floop_? No," he said.

"Junaya," I guessed.

"No."

"Kina," I said.

"Very good!" he applauded. "It's so liberating, being unrecognized. I've half a mind to not tell the whole circle. They're so tiresome, it makes me _tosky_."

Half a mind is right. "And you let me in on the secret? I'm honoured."

"You should do it too," Kina coaxed. "It'll be fun, we'll fool everyone. How about the new hairdancers? In, oh, lemon--no! Purple Dusk! And I saw just the eye colour for you, it's so new no one will have it, it's called Opal Dawn--"

"Kina," I said, "I like the way I look now." And why wouldn't I? I'd done a good job designing this body, with silver-mauve hair that dragged on the floor and green eyes with a facetdisk, so they caught the light and flashed like the fountains at Peridot Waterway, and my nails were always apple jade. Besides, hairdancers tangled into everything, tuned into your thoughts as they were--the models would be very careful to think serene things, so the hairdancers would ripple becomingly, but get angry and your hair would lash like snakes. Not that Kina would know what a snake was, since he never went to the History Tower.

"But you always look like that. It gets _droad_. Why not change?"

"Because I'm satisfied with it," I said. "I'm used to it."

"You're not supposed to get used to it," Kina said. "That's why you still have a Q-R guardian. You're--" and he fell silent and looked at the crystal path between us.

"I'm what?"

"_Zaradann_," he said with a wincing little grin.

"That wasn't what you were going to say."

Kina sighed and looked at the brilliant jewelled sky-dome. "My maker came to visit me before--before I had this change."

Before he'd drowned himself in his--her, then--bathing bubble, he meant. Kina suicided whenever he had a whim to change what his kneecaps looked like. "And?" I asked, raising one silvery brow at him.

"And she said--look, I'm telling you this because it's important. My maker wanted me to go to my circle and--cut you out."

"V...n! Why?" If I'd had hairdancers, purple dusk locks would be grabbing passers-by and strangling them. What business was it hers who Kina was friends with? Makers don't--

"She said that she found out that you were--deviant," Kina whispered. "That's why you still have a guardian."

"I'm what?" I had a guardian because I had--whoever I was--grown tired of a long life as an Older Person and underwent personality dissolution, which people do when they're bored with their life. It's different from suiciding, which Older People don't do anyway.

"The Committee wants to watch you," Kina whispered. "And when you do things that aren't normal, they're convinced. But you're--I want to help you. Get a body change, and fast."

Deviant?

I was--who was I? Deviant? I'm one of the--

Kina had my best interests at heart, he was trying to help me. A true friend, more real than any of the _promoks_ in my circle. He was giving me good advice, and I would take it immediately.

I stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth. "Opal Dawn, you said?"

He looked confused when I whirled and leapt off the crystal promenade, hanging in space for an instant, soaring without a bird-plane, my arms outstretched like wings--and people behind me screamed as they saw me, and in the instant that _flight_ became _falling_ I had time to think, _the reason why I never suicide is because it **hurts**_ and then I fell, fell--

And it did hurt. Right up until it didn't.


	2. To See Just Half Your Face

2.

To See Just Half Your Face

The ground was a carpet of flowers, and the sky above me was empty, empty. A real wind whipped my clothes against my body, and when I looked down, I stared at my clothes in horror - the plainest, scratchiest stuff - no holosparkle or see-through or gem armour at all, just plain and solid and the colour of sand.

No. That was wrong. The sands were there, in the distance beyond the flowers, and a tree hung heavy with purple blossoms that swirled, petal by petal, grabbed by the wind.

The wind mattered. There was danger, and the pile of the same plain not-sand cloth tumbled at my feet. I was supposed to stretch it out. Over the flowers. The poor tree--

"Hurry!"

Shouting. At me. A man just stood up, and a gray square blotted out the blossoms. "Hurry!" He ran at me, and he grew bigger, and then I saw his face--

_his face_

_

* * *

_

Screaming, I awoke in the Limbo Tub.

"It's all right now, you're safe, you're safe," the Q-R attendant soothed at me. "We found you, it's all right."

Sobbing, I nearly threw myself out of the tub and bawled all over the silly--familiar, usual--thing, but remembered myself (deviant) just in time.

"It's all right," The Q-R burbled again.

"What happened?" I asked, and then remembered. It had hurt. But that body, not this one. I didn't look at the unfinished limbs, like anonymous rolls of dough. I looked at the Q-R, who smiled down at the good little Jang in the tank. I'd tossed myself off a bridge. How _drumdik_.

"There, there," the Q-R soothed. "Do you want your design tablet?"

"Please," I murmured sweetly. It set the console down and went away, just like I'd hoped. I looked at the controls and set to designing the most _insumatt_ body ever. Really, I could have just gone for a change, I hadn't had one in two _vreks_. I didn't have to jump.

Why did I jump? "Set eye colour to Opal Dawn; keep."

Kina was right - the colour was just _groshing_. A kind of silvery gray, with depths of rose, green, amber, blue, violet--There silver, and there gold--perfect! I would design the whole body around them, marvellous, _derisann_ eyes.

Was it fear? "Body type Artemis, taller, taller...stop. Complexion type burnished gold; try a bit of rose undertones--no, too chalky, lighter...no, try a yellow-orange...browner, more gold...stop." The body lengthened and coloured in, only those ghost-kissed eyes filled in. "More brown on the skin. Try type Parvati, fade down towards burnished gold--slower! Start again...stop! Perfect."

I tinkered with it some more, trying out different hair, facial structures, types--nothing suited. My Q-R came in with a meal injection, which was all I could stop for. I wasn't getting the design right, but I wanted those eyes.

I finally figured out what was wrong, and laughed at the simplicity of it--and walked out later in my new body: Skin of golden Parvati, Opal Dawn eyes, milk platinum hair to my waist.

Kina was waiting at the landing from limbo for me. His eyes slid past, and then back again in stunned disbelief...and then frustrated anger.

"Oh, you _promok_! You ridiculous, contrary, _zaradann_ _thralldrap_! How could you?"

"Nice to see you too, Kina," I said, and oh, my voice was like Joyousness poured over a brass bell. I spoke again, just to hear it. "You were right about the eye colour. D'you think the hair is a little too much?"

"_Farathoom_!" yelled Kina, and cast his offering at my feet, clinking and rolling at my toes. He whirled and got into his bird-plane, stranding me.

I watched him take off in his crystal dove before looking down at the ten rings scattered around my feet. Poor Kina--he knew, of course, that the body I designed would be _groshing_, and so wanted to marry for a few units.

I'm not sure why he never imagined that I would come back male. I scooped the ten rings up and walked to the flyers. I'd apologize to him, once he wasn't so embarrassed.

* * *

"_Attlevey_," the fourth girl of the afternoon said to me, sweeping lashes long as fingertips over blushing cheeks, their movements more liquid and rounded, sure to catch the eye. It was a good body, superlative even in a crowd of _insumatt_ beauty. 

"_Attlevey_," I replied, correctly polite and no more. I didn't know what was happening. Usually after a change I'm raring to have love, but I was dissatisfied and _tosky_. Perhaps I needed some ecstasy, or the Adventure Palace, or perhaps I just needed to go home--

I jumped back as a circle of young men careened into the path from Ilex Park, playing at lightswords, their blades crackling with sparks each time they met in parry and slash. I moved into the circle, meant to protect passers-by from their antics. One had red lights down his arm, and the harness made it hang limp, because it had been "hit." But the crowd was cheering him, and his opponent looked worried, shuffling backwards against a relentless attack. I watched the sure step of his back and the strength rippling across his shoulders. I'd designed similar for myself.

I blinked, and in that space it was over. I cheered with the rest of the circle, rushed forward to congratulate the winner, and he turned to laugh with someone next to me--

his face

Half-covered by silver paint and geometric spirals, the other half unadorned--masculine, with high cheekbones and enough corner on the jaw, and beautiful, so _derisann_ my knees went liquid and I laughed.

What imp of perversity had made me design a male body?


End file.
